Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has been the country's president since 2012, having previously held the position from 1999 to 2008. From 1999 to 2000, and again from 2008 to 2012, he served as Prime Minister. He is estimated to be worth $200 billion.

Putin was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and earned his bachelor's degree in law from Leningrad State University in 1975. Putin spent 16 years in the KGB as a foreign intelligence officer, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before resigning in 1991 to seek a political career in Saint Petersburg. In 1996, he relocated to Moscow to join President Boris Yeltsin's government.

Before being appointed Prime Minister in August 1999, he served as Head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Member of the Security Council for a short time. Following Yeltsin's resignation, Putin took over as acting president and was elected outright to his first term as president less than four months later.

The Russian economy expanded for eight years in a row during his first term as president, with GDP growing by 72% in buying power, real incomes increasing by a factor of 2.5, real wages more than tripling, unemployment and poverty more than halving, and Russians' self-assessed life satisfaction rising dramatically. A fivefold increase in the price of oil and gas, which accounts for the majority of Russian exports, as well as recovery from the post-Communist depression and financial crises, an increase in foreign investment, and prudent economic and fiscal policies, contributed to the country's growth.

He undertook large-scale military and police reforms while working under Dmitry Medvedev from 2008 to 2012. Putin campaigned for a third term as president in 2012 and won nearly 64% of the vote. Falling oil prices, combined with international sanctions imposed in early 2014 in response to Russia's invasion of Crimea and the War in Donbass, caused the Russian economy to contract by 3.7 percent in 2015. However, the Russian economy rebounded in 2016, with 0.3% GDP growth, and the recession was officially over.  Pipelines have been built, the satellite navigation system GLONASS has been restored, and infrastructure for international events such as the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi has been built under Putin's watch. In the 2018 election, Putin won 76% of the vote and was re-elected for a six-year term that will end in 2024.

Putin's annual Presidential pay is $187,000, according to government records (5.8 million rubles). He received 3.6 million rubles ($113,000) in 2012, according to his tax return. Putin also appears to have a small net worth of $180,000 in a savings account, a few Russian-made vehicles, and a 16,000 square foot plot of land in the Moscow suburbs. In total, they claimed their net worth totaled less than $500,000. He has an art collection valued at $2 billion.

Many Russian insiders and analysts agree that Putin has used his power to do more than just change the lives of ordinary Russians during his reign. Despite the fact that several historically state-owned companies have been privatized, Putin is accused of using his power to accumulate significant secret ownership stakes in many multibillion-dollar commodity firms. Putin's most outspoken opponents say that he has used his influence to gain a 4.5% stake in natural gas producer Gazprom, a 37% stake in oil firm Surgutneftegas, and a 50% stake in Swiss oil trader Gunvor. Gazprom generates more than $150 billion in annual sales, Guvnor $80 billion, and Surgutneftegas $20 billion. Using their most recent market capitalizations, Putin's combined ownership stakes would give him a personal net worth of $200 billion.The Russian president, who is known for his secrecy, keeps his net worth hidden as well. Bill Browder, the former CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and Putin's foe, placed Putin's net worth at $200 billion.“I estimate that [Putin] has accumulated $200 billion of ill-gotten gains,” Browder told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017. Putin has remained tight-lipped about the amount. "This information has no substance," a representative from the Russian Federation's President's Press and Information Office said when faced with links to the stories. "Putin considers everything that belongs to the Russian Federation's territories to be his," exiled Russian banker Sergei Pugachev told the Guardian (Pugachev was once known as "Putin's banker"). According to him, "Any effort to find out [Putin's net worth] would fail. Unless he leaves power, he is the wealthiest person on the planet."

On July 28, 1983, Putin married Lyudmila Shkrebneva. From 1985 to 1990, they lived in East Germany, where their daughter Yekaterina Putina was born. Mariya Putina, their second daughter, was born in Leningrad. In June 2013, they announced their divorce, and in April 2014, they confirmed it had been finalized. For a politician, his public image is somewhat special, primarily identified by his "macho" exotic image. On many occasions, he has been photographed shirtless or involved in dangerous and extreme sports.

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This article was updated on March 12, 2021 by Vanessa Shumbanhete

Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, investor and the creator of the multi-national e-commerce company, Amazon, with a net worth of $196 Billion, according to Business Insider.

He was born to teen parents, Ted Jorgensen and Jacklyn Bezos in Albuquerque, and they later divorced and his mother remarried to Mike Bezos.  Though his parents were not wealthy, Bezos's maternal grandparents owned a ranch in Texas, and it is there he says he learned the importance of hard work.  Bezos graduated from Princeton University in 1986, with a degree in electrical engineering and computer science. He worked on Wall Street from 1986 to early 1994 in different fields, and eventually Bezos founded Amazon in late 1994.

He wrote the business plan while he and his then wife, Mackenzie, drove from Texas to Seattle. They chose to name it  Amazon.com after the river and because it would show up first on lists ordered alphabetically. The company began to float on the stock market in 1997 and showed its first profits in 2001. The company began in their garage as an online bookstore and has since grown to selling a wide variety of other products like video games, electronics, clothes, furniture, food and toys . Amazon is now one of the world's largest online companies by revenue and the world's largest provider of virtual assistants.

Jeff and MacKenzie met in 1992 when they both worked at hedge fund D.E. Shaw. There, Jeff worked as a financial analyst. They got married the next year and moved to Seattle in 1994 together, which was the beginning of Amazon. Just like Jeff, Mackenzie was a student of the author Toni Morrison at Princeton and worked as her research assistant. The couple was married for 25 years and have 4 children together. Unfortunately, the couple divorced mid 2019 because Bezos allegedly was having an affair with former TV anchor and pilot, Lauren Sanchez. The divorce was costly for him: Jeff had to give her  25% of his Amazon stake, which was 4% of the company. The shares were worth $38 billion in 2019, making this the most expensive divorce settlement in history; the previous record was $2.5 billion paid to Jocelyn Wildenstein in 1999. Mackenzie changed her last name from Bezos to Scott in 2020, and currently she is the fourth richest woman in the world with a net worth of $52.1 billion.

Though the divorce was costly for Bezos, he still recovered because the pandemic increased his revenue. In 2019, his company amassed $280.5 billion in revenues and made a record $11.5 billion in net profit. Between March and April 2020, during the pandemic, Amazon claims it hired 175,000 additional workers. Online businesses were boosted in the pandemic, and Amazon was the top beneficiary.

However Amazon still faced criticism from the general public for its treatment of warehouse workers. Following constant backlash, Bezos announced on February 2nd 2021 he would be resigning as  the CEO of Amazon. Instead, he will be focusing on Blue Origin, his aerospace company that is focused on developing rockets for commercial use. Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2006. He always had an interest in space travel and the development of human life in the solar system.

Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which he purchased on August 5, 2013 for $250 million at the suggestion of his friend, Don Graham. He established Nash Holdings to serve as a holding company through which he would own the newspaper. The sale closed on October 1, 2013, and Nash Holdings took control. Since then, The Washington Post has had a surge in online readership in 2016 and became profitable for the first time since Bezos purchased it.

Jeff also is an investor; he owns a venture capitalist company named Bezos Expeditions. He makes personal investments and donations through the company. He was one of the first shareholders in Google, where he invested $250,000 in 1998, which resulted in 3.3 million shares of Google stock worth about $3.1 billion as of 2017. Bezos has invested in Unity Biotechnology, a life-extension research firm aiming to stop aging.  He has also invested in the healthcare sector,  including companies like Grail, Unity Biotechnology, Zoc Doc and Juno Therapeutics.

Bezos is also a donor and philanthropist through the Bezos Expeditions. He has funded an Innovation center at the Seattle Museum of History and Industry and the Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics at Princeton Neuroscience Institute.  As of April 2020, Bezos said he will give $100 million to Feed America, a nonprofit charity organization that operates food banks and food pantries across the United States.

SOURCES : BEZOS EXPEDITIONS, Business Insider, Forbes, Town and Country, The Guardian, Celeb Answers

This article was updated on March 9, 2021 by Vanessa Shumbanhete

Elon Reeve Musk is a South African born businessman, designer, and engineer with an estimated net worth of $163.9 billion as of March 2021. The businessman is responsible for the creation of Paypal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors, and is considered a "modern-day Tony Stark" because of his innovative creations and ideas. When he sold his start-up business, Zip2, in his late twenties, he became a multimillionaire, and his wealth has since risen to billions.

Musk, who was born to a model-dietician mother and a millionaire father, and demonstrated his creativity at a young age when he taught himself to program and sold his first program, a game called Blastar when he was 12 years old. Musk moved to Canada at the age of 17 in 1989 to attend Queen's University and escape military service in South Africa. Musk got his Canadian citizenship the same year, partly because he thought it would be easier to get American citizenship that way. Musk left Canada in 1992 to attend the University of Pennsylvania to study business and physics. He earned an undergraduate degree in economics before moving on to earn a second bachelor's degree in physics. Musk dropped out of Stanford after just two days of attempting to complete his PhD in order to be a part of the internet revolution, founding Zip2 Corporation in 1995. Musk became a resident of the United States in 2002.

Musk and his brother, Kimbal Musk, founded their first company, Zip2 Corporation, in 1995. Zip2 was purchased for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options by a subsidiary of Compaq Computer Corporation in 1999. Musk and his brother founded X.com, an online financial services/payments business, with the proceeds from the sale of Zip2. The next year, X.com was acquired, resulting in the formation of PayPal as we know it today. When PayPal was purchased by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock in October 2002, Musk made his first billion. Musk owned 11% of PayPal stock prior to the transaction.

Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, in 2002 with the aim of developing commercial spacecraft. By 2008, SpaceX had formed itself, and NASA had given it the contract to transport cargo to the International Space Station. Musk and SpaceX made history on May 22, 2012, when they sent an unmanned capsule into space aboard their Falcon 9 rocket. Musk's rocket venture, SpaceX, has a total value of $46 billion dollars.

Tesla Motors, founded in 2003, is committed to manufacturing affordable, mass-market electric vehicles, as well as battery products and solar roofs. Musk is the co-founder, CEO, and product architect. Musk is in charge of the company's product development, engineering, and design. Musk's net worth increased by $140 billion in 2020, taking it to $167 billion, thanks to the electric automaker's stock exploding by over 734 % since the start of the year. Musk owns around 241 million shares of Tesla, or 25% of the company.

Furthermore, his net worth has recently risen and fallen in lockstep with the price of Bitcoin. Last month, Tesla announced that it had added $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency to its balance sheet. Musk's fortune plummeted by $15 billion two weeks later after he remarked on Twitter that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies' prices "do seem big."

Musk married Justine Wilson, a Canadian author whom he met while attending Queen's University. They were married in 2000 and divorced in 2008. They have a total of five children and Musk has two other kids from separate relationships. He married Talulah Riley, an English actress, in 2012, but the couple divorced in 2016. Musk has an undeniable influence on this generation, having been named to Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2010, 2013, and 2018. On Jan. 26, 2021, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he was the richest person in the world surpassing Jeff Bezos. Musk is getting into minimalism in 2021, starting with getting rid of a whole lot of California real estate. He sold three houses in May 2020 after turning them into a Bel-Air cul-de-sac for $62 million and is looking to sell more of his properties.

Sources: Forbes, Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Biography, CNBC, Bloomberg

This article was updated on March 24th, 2021 by Vanessa Shumbanhete

Frank C. Mars was the creator of Mars company, building up the $127 billion wealth of the Mars family members today. He was born in Glenwood, Pope County, Minnesota. In 1883, he contracted polio, which prevented him from attending school. So his mother, Elva, taught him how to work around the kitchen and, most importantly, taught him how to hand-dip chocolate. Since he was 19 , Mars had been has been selling Taylor’s Molasses Chips in Minnesota. From there, the passion turned into a business, and now it is the world's largest confectionery company: Mars achieves a turnover of about $27.5 billion a year.

Popular brands created by Mars include the Milky Way bar (created by Frank.C Mars's wife Ethel in 1923), M&Ms (400 million are produced in the firm's American plants daily) and the Snickers bar (allegedly named after their favorite family horse). The multi-billion-dollar company is also responsible for the Mars Bar, 3 Musketeers and Twix candies.

The company is 107-years-old and has helped the Mars family accumulate a fortune of $127 billion. The six family members, all who rank on the Forbes 400 list, get $72 billion of that fortune each, making them America’s third-richest family, according to the Institute for Policy Studies “Billionaire Bonanza” report.

When Forrest Sr. died in 1999, his three children, John, Jacqueline, and Forrest Jr. Mars —inherited the company. Unfortunately Forrest Jr. passed away in 2016, so Jacqueline and John co-own the company today. However, they do not run the day-to-day operations Mars Inc. They, together, have the biggest share of the family fortune, with $24 billion each.

The Mars company soon began to manufacture pet food, with brands like the widely known Pedigree and Whiskas among them. The family has managed to avoid the limelight, as they have been known to keep their company and their headquarters “anonymous”. However, the company made headlines in 2008 by making a joint purchase of Wrigley, the chewing gum company, with Warren Buffet for $23 billion.

Jacqueline Mars is the sibling with a lifestyle that ''reflects'' her billionaire status, according to Jan Pottker of The Washingtonian in 2008. She reportedly listed her estate in New Jersey for $US2 million and has a place called "Stone Hall Farm" in Virginia. She also maintains her mother’s Watergate penthouse. Like her family, Jacqueline still maintains privacy for the most part.

With a $35 billion firm, Mars is third largest private business in the United States, and it was previously ranked as the best place to work by Fortune magazine. Mars attributes its success to the five principles that were created by  Pamela Mars: quality, responsibility, mutuality, efficiency and freedom.

SOURCES : Business Insider, Visual Capitalist, Mars.com, Richmondfed

This article was updated on March 11, 2021 by Vanessa Shumbanhete

Bill Gates is a software developer, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and investor who has a net worth of $125.9 billion. He is a co-founder of Microsoft Corporation and also owns Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, TerraPower, Branded Entertainment Network, ResearchGate, and Gates Ventures. Since 1987, he has been included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people. From 1995 to 2017, he held the Forbes title of the richest person in the world all but four of those years.To date, Bill's most profitable company is Microsoft, which he co-founded with Paul Allen. With its headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the pair developed software for the first microcomputer in 1975. In the years that followed, the company was formally renamed Microsoft. As the company grew, its clients expanded to include start-ups such as Apple. In 1979, they relocated the company to Seattle, where it received widespread recognition. IBM was searching for an operating system (OS) for their personal computer, the IBM PC, at the time, and Gates provided them with MS-DOS as a solution. Despite the fact that it was made for IBM, Microsoft had the right to license their software to other PC manufacturers, which they did. The majority of manufacturers switched to MS-DOS for their systems, and sales more than doubled in 1981 compared to the previous year.

Gates became one of the country's richest people when Microsoft went public in 1986. The initial share price was $21. The stock closed at $27.75 at the end of the trading day, making Bill's 45 percent worth $350 million. He became the world's youngest billionaire the following year, at the age of 31. Bill Gates became the world's richest man in 1995.

In the year 2000, Bill Gates resigned as CEO of Microsoft. He and his wife, Melinda, founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation the same year. In 2017, it was announced that Gates was donating 64 million Microsoft shares worth $4.6 billion, taking his interest in the company down to just over 1%. According to Business Insider, Gates' remaining 1% stake is still worth $7 billion. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given millions of dollars to charities, including $300 million for the creation of a low-cost Covid-19 vaccine. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has over $40 billion in assets. Gates manages his personal fortune through a company called Cascade Investment. Despite the fact that Cascade is not a public entity, it is required to report some of its investment operations to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Coca-Cola, Canadian National Railway, Deere & Company, among other companies are among the company's investments. Gates is said to own 47% of the Four Seasons hotel chain and interest in Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway through his Cascade asset class. He resigned from the public boards of both Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway in March 2020.

Bill Gates is married to Melinda Gates, they wed in the Hawaiian island of Lanai on January 1, 1994, and currently have three children together Phoebe Adele, Rory John, and Jennifer Katharine. According to reports, he intends to leave just $10 million to each of his three children. Melinda met Bill while working for Microsoft in the software development division in 1987 long before their relationship began.  She worked for Microsoft from 1986 to 1996.

Gates' real estate holdings are estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. His house, dubbed Xanadu 2.0 after the Orson Welles film Citizen Kane, is worth more than $154 million on its own. Bill Gates began construction on his high-tech dream home in 1988, spending $2 million to purchase the plot of land and employ all of the technicians who would carry out his designs. The mansion now boasts seven suites, 24 baths, six kitchens, a 60-foot pool, a sauna, and a well-equipped gym, among other amenities. There is also a locker room at the pool. He is an avid reader, and a quote from The Great Gatsby is painted on the ceiling of his massive home library. The library houses priceless works by Da Vinci and others. They live in an automated, electronic house with sensors, cameras, and a computerized garden system. The program as a whole is estimated to be worth a whopping $80,000 million.

Reports say he recently purchased a private jet worth around $40 million. Bill and his wife are also art collectors; in 1994, they paid $30.8 million for Leonardo da Vinci's "Codex Leicester" collection. Gates is believed to have owned a $25 million island in Belize.  Gate's automotive collection is worth more than $5.1 million, including vehicles such as the Porsche Taycan ($185,000), Maybach 62S Landaulet ($1.4 million), Tesla Model X ($145,000), Audi R8 ($250,000), Lamborghini Aventador ($600,000), and Bugatti Veyron ($1.7 million), to name a few.

He is passionate about closing the global wealth gap and promoting renewable energy, and he does so through his charities and businesses. Bill and Melinda Gates, along with their friend Warren Buffet, initiated the Giving Pledge in 2010 to inspire other billionaires around the world to donate the majority of their money to philanthropic causes.  The pledge has 211 signatories from 23 countries as of August 2020. The majority of the pledge's signatories are billionaires, with pledges totaling $600 billion as of 2016.

Sources: Forbes, Economic Times, Business Insider, News week, HotCars.com, Investopedia, The Giving Pledge

This article was updated on March 25th, 2021 by Vanessa Shumbanhete

Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault is a French businessman, investor, and an art collector with a net worth of $158 billion. Arnault is the chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods company. He is the richest person in France and the fourth richest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine. Bernard Arnault is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of LVMH Moet Hennessy – Louis Vuitton, the world's largest luxury goods corporation.

Mr. Arnault was born on March 5, 1949, in Roubaix, France to a wealthy industrial family. He attended the Roubaix lycée and the Faidherbe lycée in Lille. He then went on to the Ecole Polytechnique to further his studies.

Arnault began his career working for his father’s manufacturing company. Five years into the position, he persuaded his father to leave the housing development division and enter the real estate market. Under the name Férinel, the new organization at first created stellar event facilities. Named a director of the company in 1974, he became chief executive in 1977. In 1979, he succeeded his father as president of the company.

In 1984, Arnault purchased Financière Agache with the assistance of Antoine Bernheim, a senior partner of financier Lazard Frères et Cie, and took ownership of Boussac, a beleaguered textile business that owned, among other things, Christian Dior and the department store Le Bon Marché. With the purchase as a step into the luxury industry, Arnault worked hard and set out to create the world's largest luxury conglomerate.

LVMH's value grew fifteenfold over the next 11 years. One of the key factors in the company’s success has been Arnault’s program of decentralization and his efforts to highlight each brand’s heritage so that each company is viewed as a separate entity. He beat the owner of  Zara, Amancio Ortega, to become the richest person in fashion in April 2018. In December 2019, Arnault briefly overtook Jeff Bezos as the world's richest man. In January 2020, he briefly regained the title of the world's richest person.

Berluti and Kenzo were acquired by LVMH in 1993. In the same year, Arnault purchased La Tribune, a French economic newspaper, which he later sold before reinvesting in the newspaper industry by purchasing Les Echos. Over the next several years, Arnault earned the nickname "a wolf in cashmere" by acquiring Givenchy, Guerlain, Marc Jacobs, Sephora, Emilio Pucci, Fendi, Loro Piana, Nicholas Kirkwood, Thomas Pink, R.M Williams, EDUN, and Donna Karen, as well as a several of jewelry labels including TAG Heuer, De Beers, and Bulgari, among many others.

In addition to LVMH, Arnault is in charge of a handful of other investment and holding firms. Groupe Arnault has made significant investments in Netflix and Blue Capital, as well as a large interest in Carrefour, a French retail chain. He's also purchased Princess Yachts outright and invested in Boo.com and a number of other online ventures.

He married Anne Dewavrin in 1973, and the couple had two daughters, Delphine and Antoine. They divorced in 1990. He then married Canadian concert pianist Hélène Mercier in 1991, and the couple has three children. They are based in Paris. Delphine, Antoine, Alexandre, and Frédéric, as well as his niece Stephanie Watine Arnault, all have official positions in Arnault's brands. As of 2010, Bernard Arnault has become the father-in-law of Xavier Niel, a French billionaire businessman who is the partner of his daughter Delphine and works in telecommunications and technology.

Arnault was the owner of the Amadeus, a 70 m (230 ft) converted research vessel that was sold in late 2015. Symphony, his latest yacht, is 101.5 meters (333 feet) long and was designed by Feadship in the Netherlands. Grand Officier de la Légion d'Honneur and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres are honorary titles presented on him.

Bernard Arnault’s net worth makes him one of the richest people in the world behind people like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Carlos Slim Helu.

SOURCES: Forbes, LVMH, BusinessOfFashion, Networthbro

This article was updated on March 12, 2021 by Vanessa Shumbanhete

Mark Zuckerberg is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, founder, and CEO of Facebook, the most popular social network worldwide with 2.8 billion monthly active users. He has an estimated net worth of $101 billion as of March 2021, which makes him the world's third centi-billionaire.

Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, United States. His parents are Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist, and Karen Kempner, a psychiatrist. He has three sisters, Randi, Donna, and Arielle. Zuckerberg is married to his longtime girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, who he met at Harvard. In December 2015, Zuckerberg announced the birth of their first daughter, Maxima Chan Zuckerberg. Their second daughter, August, was born in August 2017.

Zuckerberg started Facebook in 2004 when he was a student at Harvard with classmates Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin, and Andrew McCollum. When the platform expanded to other universities, he dropped out of college and moved to Silicon Valley. In 2008, Zuckerberg became the youngest self-made billionaire. He took Facebook public in May 2012 and as of February 2021, he owns almost 13% of the shares, equivalent to approximately $94 billion, which constitute most of his fortune. The last published data regarding Zuckerberg’s compensation informs that he received $23,415,973 during 2019 due to his work at Facebook and that he had won $22,554,543 the previous year.

Zuckerberg founded the non-profits Startup: Education in September 2010, FWD.us (immigration and criminal justice) in April 2013, Internet.org (connectivity in undeveloped countries) in August 2013, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (venture investments and grants) in December 2015, and Chan Zuckerberg Biohub (medical research for infectious diseases) in September 2016. He also cofounds Breakthrough Energy Coalition (renewable energy) in November 2015 and is co-founder and board member of Breakthrough Starshot (exploration of stars light-years away from Earth to look for water), created in April 2016. Besides, Zuckerberg serves on the boards of Breakthrough Initiatives (seekers of scientific evidence of life in outer space), BeatMed (online medical marketplace), and Thunes (payment network). In addition, he is a Mentor at CHORD (photo-sharing service).

Zuckerberg carried out most of his investment through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, but he personally invested $4 million in Panorama Education (SaaS platform for schools) in October 2013, $40 million in Vicarious (artificial intelligence for robots) in March 2014, $12 million in Vicarious on a second funding round in November 2014, $20 million in EducationSuperHighway (internet infrastructure for schools) in November 2015, $50 million in Asana (software to manage workflows) in March 2016, $50 million in Intercom (customer support service for businesses) in April 2016, and $23 million in Code.org (computer programming education) also in April 2016.

In December 2010, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett signed "The Giving Pledge", in which they committed to donate at least half of their wealth throughout their lives, and invited others to do the same. Previously that year, Zuckerberg donated an unrevealed amount to Diaspora, an open-source web server for personal use, and $100 million to the public school system of Newark, New Jersey. In December 2013, he announced a donation of $18 million Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, equivalent to $990 million. Zuckerberg and his wife also contributed $25 million to research related to the Ebola virus in October 2014. In December 2015, he and his wife pledged 99% of their Facebook shares to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative over their lifetimes.

In September 2016, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative donated $3 billion to fight deadly diseases. Since the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was created, it invested $164 million in a network that contacts companies with engineers in emerging markets, $150 million in an online curriculum for kids, $120 million in a service that connects students and recent graduates with the job market, $115 million in a startup that converts content from reliable providers into learning materials, $113 million in an organization that partners with top-tier universities to offer business education globally, $100 million in a network of schools that offers experimental learning, $77 million in an educational platform that prepares students for college entrance exams, $50 million in an online learning system, and $50 million in an educational organization that develops personalized learning programs, among others, totalizing more than $1.1 billion. In 2017, Zuckerberg pledged to fund $6 billion to $12 billion towards the initiative over the next few years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Zuckerberg donated $25 million to a company supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that investigates treatments against the disease.

The Zuckerberg family lives in a 5000-square-foot house in Palo Alto, California, that was purchased in May 2011 for $7 million. In 2012, he bought four houses that surround his Palo Alto residence for more than $43 million. Zuckerberg also owns a 5500-square-foot house in San Francisco acquired for $10 million in 2013. In 2014, Zuckerberg's real-estate portfolio expanded with two properties covering 750 acres in Kauai Island, Hawaii, that he bought for $100 million. Then he purchased another 89 acres on Kauai Island for $59 million in 2017. In 2018, Zuckerberg spent $59 million on two private waterfront properties on Lake Tahoe, located between California and Nevada. Besides, he owns a yacht evaluated at $150 million and a Pagani Huayra car prized at $1.3 million, and he spends about $5 million annually in order to fly in a private jet.

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This article was updated on March 12, 2021 by Andrés Taurian 

Warren Edward Buffett is the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is an American investor, business tycoon, and philanthropist worth $100.3 billion according to Forbes on March 2021. Buffett is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate that owns more than 60 businesses, including insurer Geico, battery manufacturer Duracell, and restaurant chain Dairy Queen.

Warren Buffett nicknamed the "Oracle of Omaha," is one of the world's most successful investors. At a young age, Buffett showed an interest in business and investing. One Thousand Ways to Make $1000, a book he borrowed from the Omaha public library when he was seven, inspired him. He first bought stocks at the age of 11 and filed taxes at the age of 13. He is the only son of Leila and Congressman Howard Buffett, and he is the second of three children. After moving with his family to Washington, D.C., Warren finished elementary school, attended Alice Deal Junior High School, and graduated there. Buffett did not want to attend college and go into business, but his father persuaded him.

In his youth, he developed an interest in business and investing, eventually enrolling at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in 1947 before transferring to and graduating from the University of Nebraska at the age of 19. He went on to Columbia Business School, where he based his investment philosophy on Benjamin Graham's pioneering concept of value investing. He went to the New York Institute of Finance to hone his economics skills, and soon after, he established several business partnerships, one of which was with Graham. In 1956, he founded Buffett Partnership, Ltd, which later acquired Berkshire Hathaway, a textile manufacturing company, and adopted its name to form a diversified holding company. Buffett has been the chairman and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway since 1970. Despite his enormous wealth, he is known for his commitment to value investing and personal frugality. According to research published by the University of Oxford, Buffett's investment strategy falls under the category of "founder centrism," which is defined by a deference to managers with a founder's mindset, an ethical attitude toward the shareholder collective, and a laser-like focus on the bottom line.

In 1952, Buffett married Susan. Susie, Howard, and Peter were their three children together. While Susan Buffett died in July 2004, the couple started living separately in 1977. Buffett married his lifelong friend, Astrid Menks, who was 60 years old at the time, on his 76th birthday in 2006. She had lived with him since his wife moved to San Francisco in 1977. Susie, his daughter, lives in Omaha and serves on the national board of Girls, Inc., as well as doing charitable work through the Susan A. Buffett Foundation.

It was reported in December 2006 that he did not own a cell phone, did not have a computer at his desk, and drove his own vehicle, a Cadillac DTS. In comparison, he claimed at the 2018 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting that his favorite search engine is Google. He had an old Nokia flip phone in 2013 and had only ever sent one email in his life. Buffett disclosed in a CNBC interview in February 2020 that he had traded in his flip phone for an iPhone 11.

Buffett is a modest man with a humble demeanor. He does not live lavishly despite his vast wealth. In fact, he has lived in the same house since 1958 before amassing his massive fortune.  By accepting a low-paying job, he gains the moral and social capital that underpins his modest lifestyle, allowing him to lecture corporate America on its greed and rein in its voracious appetite for capital accumulation. Buffett has spoken out against the United States' unequal wealth distribution and supports a higher tax rate for the wealthy. Second, receiving a large salary from a company in which he has a large stake does not make financial sense for him. Berkshire Hathaway's value would be lowered, and the stock would be diluted.

He and Bill Gates launched the Giving Pledge in 2010, which asked billionaires to pledge to donate at least half of their wealth to charitable causes. He has pledged to give away over 99 percent of his fortune. The 90-year-old Buffett’s net worth would be significantly greater had he not begun donating his Berkshire shares to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four family charities.

SOURCES : Forbes, Reuters , Investopedia

This article was updated on March 12, 2021 by Vanessa Shumbanhete

Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is a Russian-American mathematician and computer scientist who co-founded Google along with Larry Page and has an estimated net worth of $97.25 billion as of April 2021. He is the eighth wealthiest person in the world, according to Bloomberg, and the ninth according to Forbes. In December 2019, Brin resigned as President of Alphabet, the parent company of Google since 2015, but remains a board member and a controller shareholder with 25.2% of the total voting power. He owns 19.1 million Class A shares and 19.1 Class B shares of the company, equal to more than $86 billion, considering the closing price of the stock on April 12, 2021.

In late 2020, Brin established a family office in Singapore to manage his assets. Setting up this firm, named Bayshore Global Management, he joins the group of billionaires that take advantage of Singapore's low tax regime and incentives program for this kind of company.

Brin was born on August 21, 1973, in Moscow, Russia. He fled the Soviet Union with his family at the age of 6 and grew up in Adelphi, Maryland. Brin studied mathematics and computer science at the University of Maryland. After receiving a fellowship from the National Science Foundation, he pursued a doctorate at Stanford University and wrote several papers on data mining and pattern extraction for leading academic journals. At Stanford, Brin met his future partner Larry Page.

In that time, existing developments could only rank search results by the frequency of appearance of a given word on a web page. Page thought that ranking websites by the number of links leading to it was a more useful measure of a web page relevance, and to explore the possibilities of his idea he appealed to the data mining expertise of his classmate Brin. Together, Page and Brin authored the paper The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, which quickly became one of the most downloaded scientific documents in history.

They registered the domain google.com in 1997, and the following year incorporated Google as a privately held company. At first, Page served as CEO and Brin as President. After outgrowing some offices, the company moved to a complex of buildings in Mountain View, California, in 1999. In 2000, they started to sell text-based advertisements related to search keywords. By 2001, with the dot com crisis, a significant number of internet companies had folded, but Google was growing and turning a profit. Page and Brin recruited Eric Schmidt to serve as CEO, with Page taking the role of President for Products and Brin as President for Technology.

Google’s initial public offering in 2004 gave the company a market capitalization of $23 billion, and employees owning shares became millionaires overnight. Page and Brin, who became multibillionaires at age 27, reduced their salaries to a dollar a year and refused bonuses, tying their wealth to the performance of the company in the stock market.

Despite its growth, Google has succeeded in preserving an informal and creative work environment where employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their work time on independent projects. In addition to its product development, Google has also grown through acquisitions of hardware and software companies, among which stand out YouTube, acquired for $1.65 billion in 2006. Prior to the purchase, YouTube’s earnings were negligible, but with Google that changed significantly. Today 99% of Google’s revenue is derived from advertising.

Brin has invested in the founding rounds of electric vehicles developer Tesla with $40 million in 2006, DNA testing technology company 23andMe with $13.6 million in 2009 and $50 million in 2012, and Parkinson’s curative treatments developer OccamzRazor with $650,000 in 2018. Besides, he is financing the building of a flying airship at a NASA research center that costs between $100 and $150 million and is funded entirely by him.

Brin owns a 3,457-square-foot, two-story, three-bedroom penthouse in Manhattan bought for $8.5 million in 2008, an estate in Los Altos Hills, California, valued at $7 in 2014, and in 2015 was rumored that he was interested in a 30,000-square-foot mansion in Alpine, New Jersey, valued at $48.88 million. He also owns a yacht purchased for $80 million in 2011.

Brin pays 47 people who work for him and his family, including ex-bankers who manage his philanthropy and finances. He is one of the most philanthropic billionaires in the world: from 2000 to 2017 donated $37.5 billion.

Brin is married to Nicole Shanahan since 2018. They have been dating since 2015, and have one child. He also has two children with his former wife Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of the $1.5 billion genetics company 23andMe.

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This article was updated on April 12, 2021 by Andrés Taurian

Lawrence Edward Page is an Internet entrepreneur and computer scientist from the United States with a net worth of $91.8 billion. Along with Sergey Brin, he is best known as one of the co-founders of Google. Google is estimated to be worth $300 billion. Google's parent company, Alphabet, is estimated at about $900 billion, placing it in the same arena with Apple and Amazon for the world's most valuable companies.

Page was the CEO of Google from 1997 to August 2001 (when he stepped down in favor of Eric Schmidt). From April 2011 to July 2015, he became the CEO of Alphabet Inc. He held this role until December 4, 2019. He is also a member of the Alphabet board of directors, an employee, and a majority shareholder. The development of Google resulted in a significant increase of his wealth. Page was ranked 10th on Forbes' "Billionaires 2019" list, and as of February 2021, he was the world's  8th richest person, with a net worth of $91.8 billion, according to Forbes.

Page grew up in a well-educated family who were all computer science lovers. Carl Victor Page Sr, his father, graduated from the University of Michigan with a Ph.D. in computer science. Will Smale, a BBC reporter, called him a "pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence." Page's father was a computer science professor at Michigan State University, and his mother Gloria was a computer programming teacher at the university's Lyman Briggs College.

Page himself graduated with honors from the University of Michigan with a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and a master's degree in computer science from Stanford University. Page built an inkjet printer out of Lego bricks while at the University of Michigan after realizing that inkjet cartridges could be used to print large posters for a low cost. Page designed the electronics and mechanics to drive the ink cartridge after reverse engineering it. Page was a member of the 1993 "Maize & Blue" University of Michigan Solar Car squad and served as president of the Beta Epsilon chapter of the Eta Kappa Nu fraternity. He suggested that the University of Michigan replace its bus system with a personal transportation system while still an undergraduate. During this time, he also created a business plan for a company that would use software to create a music synthesizer.

The computer engineering graduate first teamed up with Sergey Brin to create the PageRank algorithm, which determines the relevance of web pages, a system they still use today at Google. Larry Page was a key figure in the discovery of the importance of backlinks because it could aid in the development of a better search engine algorithm.

Page was paid an annual salary of $1 while working at Google. Despite the fact that he is no longer CEO, he is still worth billions because of his substantial stake in the firm. Google is owned by Alphabet, and he owns a 6% interest in the company to this day. In the quarter that ended on December 31st, 2019, Alphabet produced $46 billion in sales, up 17% from the previous year. According to the company, approximately $10.7 billion of that was profit. With $27.2 billion in revenue for the year, Google's search company remains the most profitable part of Alphabet's vast empire.

In 2019, he stepped down once more, and Sundar Pichai (net worth $600 million) was appointed in his place. Sergey Brin also resigned, saying that the company was well-established and didn't need two CEOs. Alphabet owns a slew of businesses that it has acquired or developed over the years. Waze was acquired by Google in June 2013 for $966 million. Fitbit, Nest Laboratories, Motorola Mobility, and DoubleClick are a few more examples.

Larry Page has also invested personally in the Kitty Hawk and Opener flying car startups. In New Zealand, Kitty Hawk has started the certification process for a fully autonomous, self-piloting flying taxi. The organization has been testing its vehicles and hopes to have a commercial network in place by 2021.

Like most billionaires Page is secretive as much as possible about his properties and assets. It is known that in 2005, he started working on his dream house. He paid $7.2 million for a 9,000-square-foot Spanish Colonial Revival home in Palo Alto. The 6-bedroom, 6-bathroom home was designed by Pedro Joseph de Lemos in the 1930s. His personal passions include buying up chunks of a network of houses that use new types of fuel cells, geothermal energy, and rainwater capture. He also rides a Zero X electric dirt bike and an electric sports car from Tesla Motors, in which he and Google co-founder Sergey Brin are investors.

SOURCES: Forbes, Economic Times, Business Insider, The Verge

This article was updated on March 13, 2021 by Vanessa Shumbanhete

Larry Ellison is the chairman, chief technology officer, and co-founder of Oracle, a software magnate, of which he owns about 35.4 percent, and has a net worth of $91.2 billion as of March 2021.

Larry Ellison was born to an unmarried Jewish mother in New York City. His biological father served in the United States Army Air Corps as an Italian-American pilot. Ellison's mother gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption after he contracted pneumonia at the age of nine months. He didn't see his biological mother until he was 48 years old. Despite the fact that he was raised in a Reform Jewish home by adoptive parents who frequently attended synagogue, Ellison remained a religious skeptic. At age thirteen, Ellison refused to have a bar mitzvah celebration.

Ellison attended Chicago's South Shore High School before enrolling as a premed student at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. There, he was named science student of the year, but after his sophomore year, he dropped out without taking his final exams because his adoptive mother had recently died. He studied physics and mathematics at the University of Chicago for one term after spending the summer of 1966 in California. He didn't take any exams, and his first experience with computer design was in Chicago. He moved to Berkeley, California in 1966 when he was 22 years old.

Larry Ellison dropped out of two universities in a row and never finished his schooling. Instead, he discovered that he was a software programmer. He spent about ten years as a computer programmer before founding Oracle in 1977, but the company did not take its name until 1983. Originally, it was known as Software Development Laboratories. He was elected Entrepreneur of the Year by Harvard Business School in 1990.

Following a short tenure at Amdahl Corporation, Ellison joined Ampex Corporation in the 1970s. One of his efforts was a database for the CIA that he dubbed "Oracle." "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks," a paper by Edgar F. Codd on relational database systems, inspired Ellison. With two pamphlets, he founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in 1977. with two partners and an investment of $2,000; $1,200 of the money was his. The company changed its name to Relational Software Inc. in 1979, and then to Oracle Systems Corporation in 1983, after its flagship product, the Oracle Database. The company’s deal to become a cloud provider for TikTok in the U.S. is still not final.

Ellison acquired a 50% interest in the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament in 2010. Ellison owns a number of high-end automobiles, including an Audi R8 and a McLaren F1. His favorite car is the Acura NSX, which he was known to give away as gifts every year when it was being manufactured. Ellison is said to be the proud owner of a Lexus LFA.

Other than cards, he loved yachts. However, Ellison's ownership of the Rising Sun, the world's 12th largest yacht, came to an end in 2010. David Geffen, a music and film mogul, purchased his remaining shares in the yacht. Rising Sun is 453 feet (138 meters) long and is said to have cost more than $200 million to build. He downsized to Musashi, a Feadship 288-foot (88-metre) yacht.

While little is known about how Ellison spends his billions, he is well-known for his extravagant spending habits. In 2016, he gave the University of Southern California $200 million for a cancer treatment research center. He has amassed a sizable real estate portfolio, which includes a whole island in Hawaii and several parcels in Malibu, California. He has a home for his modern art, a home for his 19th-century art, a home for his French impressionism art, and a home for his Japanese art built on the grounds of Nanzen-ji temple in Japan. His primary residence in Woodside, California, was inspired by a 16th-century Japanese emperor's palace. The $70 million estates were developed over a nine-year period and are spread over 23 acres.

Ellison has been enamored with the Lanai island and when he became a multi-billionaire, he bought it for $300 million. 23 He owns all but 2% of the island, including two Four Seasons resorts, a movie theater, the water company, the majority of the island's utilities, and a large number of houses and apartment buildings. His vision is to transform the island into a self-sufficient, environmentally sustainable holiday destination complete with ultra-luxury hotels and a sustainability laboratory, enabling it to become the world's first economically viable, 100% green city. In 2012, he joined "The Giving Pledge," which included Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and others. In doing so, Ellison promised to donate 95% of his fortune to charity.

SOURCES: CELEBRITY NET WORTH, Investopedia, Forbes

This article was updated on March 13, 2021 by Vanessa Shumbanhete

Amancio Ortega is a Spanish businessman, founder, and former Chairman and CEO of the clothing retail company Inditex, best known for its Zara fashion stores. He owns 59,394% of the company shares, equivalent to approximately $54 billion, which constitute most of his fortune. Ortega received dividends from Inditex for $1,071 million in 2014, $1,151 million in 2015, $1,328 million in 2016, $1,505 million in 2017, $1,661 million in 2018, $1,948 million in 2019, and $779 million in 2020. He has an estimated net worth of $82 billion as of March 2021 and is the second richest person in Europe.

Ortega was born on March 28, 1936, in Busdongo de Arbas, León, Spain, a village of 60 people located in the northwestern region of the country. His parents were Antonio Ortega Rodríguez, a railway worker, and Josefa Gaona Hernández, a housemaid. He is the youngest of four children. At the age of fourteen, Ortega found a job where he learned to make clothes by hand.

From 1966 to 1986, he was married to Rosalía Mera, who died in August 2013 being Spain's richest woman. Then he married Flora Pérez in 2001. Ortega has a daughter with Pérez named Marta, 33, and a daughter and a son from his first marriage, Sandra, 48, and Marcos, 46. The businessman drives an Audi A8 luxury sedan and owns a private jet valued at $45 million. Ortega lives with his wife in a sea-facing house in La Coruña, Galicia, Spain, a city of almost 250,000 inhabitants where he is often seen walking his dog. Until 1999, no photograph of Ortega had been published. He likes to dress simply and refuses to wear a tie.

Ortega started his career in the field of textile manufacturing in 1963. In 1972, he established Confecciones Goa, the first Inditex garment factory, and in 1975 Zara España, the first distribution firm and retail seller, with his then-wife Rosalia Mera. A decade later, Ortega merged Zara into Inditex. From 1988 to 1990, Inditex expanded to Portugal, France, and the United States. In the following decade, he created Pull&Bear and Bershka brands and acquired Massimo Dutti and Stradivarius. Inditex raised $2.7 billion in its 2001 Initial Public Offering (IPO). Ortega resigned as Chairman and CEO of the company in 2011, but he still goes to work every day and is a member of the board. Inditex headquarters are in Arteixo, outside La Coruña, Galicia, Spain, and it has eight brands and 7,500 stores around the world that employed tens of thousands globally. The company earned 3.250 billion in 2014, 3.099 billion in 2015, 3.842 billion in 2016, 3.505 billion in 2017, 4.65 billion in 2018, and 4.361 million in 2019.

Ortega is Chairman and CEO of Pontegadea, a private limited company through which he controls his shareholding at Inditex in order to avoid his stocks being placed in the market if he died. The holding has assets of $17.1 billion, mostly office and shopping districts, and it had revenue of $744 million from real estate investments in 2019. The portfolio of the company includes properties like the headquarters of consultancy McKinsey in London ($839 million), The Post Building in London ($770 million), the Troy Block complex, where Amazon Seattle has its headquarters ($740 million), the Torre Picasso in Madrid ($556 million), the Cepsa Tower in Madrid ($550 million), the Southeast Financial Center in Washington ($517 million), an entire block of Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road ($370 million), The Investment Building, located in Washington’s central business district ($385 million), an office building neighboring the White House ($213 million), the Manhattan’s Haughwout Building ($160 million), a building in New York’s Soho neighborhood ($145 million), and the San Francisco’s Tiffany Building ($135 million). The real estate portfolio is mostly made up of properties located in the United States (35%), the United Kingdom (30%), and Spain (25%). Besides real estate, Pontegadea also invested in energy buying 5% of Enagas ($311 million), a company that owns and operates Spain's gas grid. The holding also acquired 9.99% of Telxius ($460 million), a company that owns telecommunication towers and submarine fiber optic cables. The holding sold its stake in Telxius in 2021.

In July 2001, Ortega founded The Amancio Ortega Foundation. The organization takes care of educational and social issues and carries out programs related to talent training, special education, public oncology, social facilities, scholarships, among others. The non-profit donated $344 million to provide technology in breast cancer screening and treatment in public hospitals. Previously to the existence of his foundation, Ortega donated almost $24 million to Caritas Internationalis, a Roman Catholic organization.

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This article was updated on March 12, 2021 by Andrés Taurian

Carlos Slim Helú is a Mexican businessman with an estimated net worth of $60.35 billion as of April 2021. He had earnings of more than $10 billion from April 2020 to April 2021 and is the sixteenth wealthy person in the world according to Forbes, and the twenty-third according to Bloomberg. Forbes’ 2010 list of the world’s great fortunes states that Slim was the wealthiest person on earth, and he ranked as the world’s richest man again in 2011 and 2012.

Slim has a majority shareholding in América Móvil, Latin America's largest mobile telecommunications enterprise. He owns 1.879 million AA shares (9.1%) and 3.072 million L shares (6.8%) of the company, in addition to 3.558 million AA Shares (17.3%) and 9.570 million L Shares (21.3%) that control through the family trust, totaling more than $25.5 billion. Besides, Inversora Carso, which is deemed to be controlled by the Slim family, owns 21.3% of the AA shares and 13.4% of the L shares, equal to $16.3 billion. Slim also owns stakes in Mexican commercial banks, consumer goods, construction, mining, and real estate firms, and 17% of The New York Times.

Slim was born on January 28, 1940 in Mexico City. His father, Julián Slim Haddad, was a Lebanese immigrant who became a businessman and died when his son was 13 years old. His mother, Linda Helú, had Lebanese origins and arrived in Mexico at the end of the 19th century. He has five siblings. At the early age of 12, Slim bought shares of Banco Nacional de México.

In 1961, Slim graduated with a Civil Engineering degree at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where he taught Algebra and Linear Programming while studying. In 1965, he founded Inversora Bursatil, a stock brokerage. The following year, Slim started the construction company Inmobiliaria Carso. Eventually, the firms merged constituting Grupo Carso, which began trading on the Mexican stock market in 1990 and was renamed Inversora Carso in 2016.

During the Mexican debt crisis of the 1980s, Slim invested in aluminum, copper, mining, and tobacco, and he also bought the restaurant and retail chain Sanborn Hermanos. Slim’s portfolio grew to include a printer and retail stores. He then acquired the Mexican interests of a number of US-based brands such as Denny’s coffee shops, Firestone tires, and Hershey’s chocolate. Slim later purchased and merged a number of insurance companies into the firm Seguros Inbursa, today Grupo Financiero Inbursa, which also has interests in banking.

In partnership with SBC and France Telecom, Slim acquired in 1990 a stake in Telmex, the state-owned telephone company, and in Grupo Condumex, a wire and fiber-optic cable manufacturer. He had a particular interest in a small part of Telmex’s operations, the company’s incipient cellphone service. In 1996, Slim founded América Móvil, a pioneer in mobile prepayment systems. In the 2000s, he started to buy mobile phone operators in Latin America through América Móvil, which merged with Telmex in 2011.

In 2017, Slim launched a television network in the United States named Nuestra Visión, presenting only Mexican content, including news, movies, and sports. The operator competes with Univisión and Televisa for a potential audience of 35 million persons of Mexican origin or ancestry living in the country.

Slim has served as Vice Chairman of the Mexican Stock Exchange and Chairman of the Mexican Association of Brokerage Firms. He was also the first Chairman of the Latin American Committee of the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange. Besides, Slim co-chaired the UNESCO’s Broadband Commission for Digital Development.

Slim is still active in business although his main work is focused on his foundations. Since 1986, the Carso Foundation has developed education and training programs throughout Latin America. The Museo Soumaya, established in 1994, preserves a collection of Mexican and European art while funding art research, conservation activities, and traveling exhibitions. The Telmex Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic institutions in Latin America, has financed activities in health, nutrition, and disaster relief, as well as higher education scholarships. Slim himself was the main donor to the restoring project of Mexico City’s downtown. In total, he has given more than $3 billion to charity.

In 1967, Slim married his late wife Soumaya Domit Gemayel (1999), with whom had six children: Carlos, Vanessa, Soumaya, Patrick, Johanna, and Marco Antonio.

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This article was updated on April 13, 2021 by Andrés Taurian

Michael Bloomberg is an American businessman, politician, and philanthropist. He was mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013, and the founder and CEO of the financial data-services and media company Bloomberg L.P. He owns 88% of the firm and has an estimated net worth of $59 billion as of March 2021.

Bloomberg was born on February 14, 1942, in Medford, a city located the northwest of Boston in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. His parents were William Bloomberg, a bookkeeper, and Charlotte Rubens, an accountant and office manager. He has a younger sister, Marjorie.

Bloomberg received a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1964, and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from Harvard University in 1966. From 1975 to 1983, Bloomberg was married to Susan Brown, with whom he has two daughters, Emma, 42, and Georgina, 38. Since 2000, his partner has been Diana Taylor.

In 1997, he published his autobiography, Bloomberg by Bloomberg. Then, the book was revised and updated, and republished in 2018. Bloomberg was made honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2014. In 2017, he published another book, called Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet (written with Carl Pope).

Bloomberg founded his company (originally named Innovative Market Solutions) after being fired as a partner at Salomon Brothers (1966-1981), a securities trading business, where he had developed a computerized financial system and received $10 million in compensation. Bloomberg L.P.’s success is largely due to its computer terminal, a broad financial information source that has its precedent in the work carried out by Bloomberg at Salomon Brothers. The company’s other holdings include the wire service Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg Radio, and the weekly business magazine Bloomberg Businessweek. Bloomberg L.P., based in New York, provides news and data for 325,000 customers who pay $24,000 a year each, it has 20,000 employees worldwide, and it had revenue of $10.5 billion in 2019, a 5% more than the previous year.

Bloomberg’s primary residence is a 7,500-square-foot, five-story Beaux-Arts mansion on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where he lived during his time as mayor, instead of the Gracie Mansion (the official mayoral residence). He bought the property for $3.5 million in 1986 and spent $1.7 million on renovations in 2013. Besides that, Bloomberg acquired five of the six apartments in the next-door building, including one he purchased for $14 million in 2016. He also owns a condominium near Park Avenue that he paid $3.8 million for in 2000, a Beaux-Arts mansion in New York that he bought for $45 million in 2006 and it is used for his philanthropic organization, a 22,000-square-foot Georgian mansion in Southampton he purchased for $20 million in 2011 and a $25 million seven-bedroom mansion in Chelsea he acquired in 2015. In addition, he has three stables in Westchester, New York, one property in Armonk and two properties in North Salem; a $4.5 million 20-acre estate next to the one he had bought in 2001; a top-floor, four-bedroom condominium in Vail, Colorado; a 12-acre property with a 12-stall horse barn and a seven bedrooms mansion in Wellington, Florida; an apartment in London; and a $10 million mansion with private beach in Bermuda.

Bloomberg, a lifelong Democrat, entered the 2001 race for mayor of New York City as a Republican. He spent more than $68 million of his fortune in the campaign and won the election. In 2005, Bloomberg was chosen for a second term, and he withdrew from the Republican Party in 2007. Bloomberg campaigned to change the law that prevented him from a third term, and in 2009 was reelected until 2013. He is one of just four people to have served that long. Bloomberg didn’t receive a salary during his time in office, which would have amounted to $2.7 million. After leaving the position, he returned to managing his company. In 2018, Bloomberg registered as a Democrat and launched the American Cities Climate Challenge, a $70 million program to help fight climate change. Besides that, he pledged to spend at least $80 million to defeat Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections. In November 2019, Bloomberg entered the presidential race, spending more than $500 million of his own wealth. He ended his campaign in March 2020 and announced his support for Joe Biden. Bloomberg was the wealthiest presidential candidate ever.

Bloomberg also founded Bloomberg Philanthropies, an organization focused on arts, education, the environment, government innovation, and public health. Besides, he is a board member at several cultural institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Central Park Conservancy, and the Jewish Museum. In 2010, he signed "The Giving Pledge", which committed to donating at least half of their fortune throughout his life, and invited others to do the same. Bloomberg has given away $11.1 billion, including $3.3 billion in 2019 ($1.8 billion was to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University). In 2020, Bloomberg Philanthropies donated $1.6 billion. In March 2021, the organization announced an investment of $150 million to establish the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University. The partnership will provide training, research, and resources for local government leaders around the world.

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This article was updated on March 16, 2021 by Andrés Taurian

American businessman, philanthropist, political activist, and chemical engineer, David Hamilton Koch, had a net worth of $50.5 billion at the time of his death. He was best known as co-owner (with older brother Charles), and an executive vice president of Koch Industries, a conglomerate that is the second-largest privately held company by revenue (with more than $100 billion in sales) in the United States according to a 2010 Forbes survey. Koch was the second-richest resident of New York City in 2010. David and his brothers Charles, Frederick, and William inherited Koch Industries from their father after his death. Their father, Fred C. Koch (d. 1967), invented the method of turning heavy oil into gasoline. Today the company, in which David had 42% stakes which have now passed to his wife Julia Flescher Koch, has investments in pipelines, refineries, fertilizer, fibers and polymers, forest and consumer products, chemical technology.

He was a major patron of the arts; a funder of conservative and libertarian political causes, including some organizations within the American Tea Party movement. Among other charities, he has contributed to Lincoln Center, Sloan Kettering, a fertility clinic at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and the American Museum of Natural History's David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing.

Born in Wichita, Kansas in the United States, Koch's parents were Mary Clementine and Fred Chase Koch. His paternal grandfather was a Dutch immigrant who was a founding shareholder of the Quanah, Acme, and Pacific Railway. Koch went to school at the Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, graduating in 1959 and moving on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He left MIT in 1963 with both a bachelor's and a master's degree in chemical engineering.

In 1970 he joined the family firm Koch Industries, founding the company's New York office. In 1979 he became president of his own division, Koch Engineering. In 1983 Charles and David bought out their brothers Frederick and Bill for $1.1 billion following a complex and acrimonious legal battle, making Charles and David the majority owners of the company. The case was not completely settled until 2001 when Bill accused the company of taking oil illegally and Koch Industries settled for $25 million.

David Koch was heavily involved in conservative politics. He was the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential candidate in the 1980 election, alongside Ed Clark. Their campaign gained 1% of the nationwide vote - a good result for the Libertarian Party compared to other election years. Koch left the Libertarian Party in 1984 after it began supporting the elimination of all taxes. After this, he donated to various political campaigns, the majority of which were Republican, including putting $100 million behind a failed bid to oppose the re-election of Barack Obama in 2012.

In 2006 Koch founded the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation. He was a trustee of the American Ballet Theatre, pledging over $6 million to its upkeep, and in 2008 he donated $100 million over 10 years to the New York State Theater in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts - home of the New York City Ballet.

In 1992, Koch was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He underwent radiotherapy, surgery, and hormone therapy, but cancer repeatedly returned. His largest philanthropic donations went towards cancer research, and between 1998 and 2012 he contributed at least $395 million to the cause.

Koch had a real estate empire worth at least $143 million, with homes in New York City, the Hamptons, Aspen, and Florida. In 1994, following her death, he purchased Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' 15-room apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue for $95. million, selling it to billionaire Glenn Dubin in 2006. At the time of his death, he lived primarily in an $18 million 18-room duplex at 740 Park Avenue, Manhattan. It's reported that residents must have a liquid net worth of at least $100 million to live at the address.

He also owned a $40.25 million Manhattan townhouse, which he bought in 2018; an $18.8 million waterfront home in the Hamptons, and a $10.5 million villa in Pam Beach.

Koch was married to Julia Flescher since 1996 and the couple had three children together: David Jr, Mary Julia, and John Mark. They met on a blind date set up by friends in 1991 and she is the president of the David H. Koch Foundation. She is now estimated to be the third richest woman in the world, with a net worth of $43 billion.

David Koch died at his Southampton, New York home on August 23rd, 2019 at the age of 79 from prostate cancer.

Sources: Forbes, Wikipedia, Business Insider

This article was updated on April 13, 2021 by Poppy O'Neill

Indian business magnate, Mukesh Ambani, has an estimated net worth of $57 billion in November 2019. Despite dropping from the list of top ten richest people in the world after losing $4.7 billion, Mukesh Ambani is still the richest Indian in the world. He is the chairman and managing director of the one of India's largest conglomerate, Reliance Industries Limited.

Mukesh Ambani's House: Antilla

The Antilla private residence has a stunning price tag of $2 billion in Mumbai, India. It was built for India's richest man Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of an enterprise that specializes in oil and gas exploration and production. The family occupies 400,000 square feet of the residence all for themselves. This is the first billion dollar residence in the world and it features a staff of 600 full-time employees tasked to maintain the estate. Antilla was named after a mythical island said to be located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Charles Koch is an American businessman, Chairman, and CEO of Koch Industries, the largest conglomerate in the United States not listed in the stock market. The company is based in Wichita, Kansas, and operates in chemicals, refining, energy, pipelines, commodities trading, electronics, and software, among others. Koch owns 42% of the firm and he has an estimated net worth ranging from $46.4 billion to $62 billion as of March 2021.

Koch was born on November 1, 1935, in Wichita, Kansas. His parents were Fred Koch, who developed an innovative crude oil refining process in 1927 and founded the company in 1940, and Mary Koch, who was involved in the Kansas arts community and supported students to pursue a college education. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received a master's degree in chemical and nuclear engineering. When his father died in 1967, the company was inherited by Charles and his brothers David, William, and Frederick, and Charles became Chairman and CEO. David joined the firm in 1970, and later he became First Vice President. In 1983, Charles and David purchased the participation of William and Frederick in the company. With Charles as CEO, Koch Industries diversified its activities into other areas beyond petroleum. David, who died in August 2019, owned 42% of the firm.

Koch is also a financial supporter of libertarian and conservative initiatives, some of which he created, like the Cato Institute, the first libertarian think tank, co-founded by him in 1977. In 2003, he founded The Charles Koch Foundation, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice, economic opportunity, education, entrepreneurship, free speech, foreign policy, immigration, liberty, and technology. Besides, Charles is the author of two books, The Science of Success (2007) and Good Profit (2015).

Koch Industries consists of several subsidiaries, including Flint Hills Resources (chemicals, pipelines, refining), Georgia-Pacific (building materials, paper products), Guardian Industries (energy-efficient glass and fuel), Invista (carpeting, cleaning compounds, fibers, plastics), Molex (electronic solutions), Koch Ag & Energy Solutions (agronomic, energy, fertilizers, methanol), Koch Engineered Solutions (pollution control), Koch Disruptive Technology (venture capital), Koch Equity Development (investments), Koch Minerals (logistic for dry-bulk commodities, oil and gas exploration/production), Koch Supply & Trading (commodities trading, risk management products), and Matador (cattle breeding). The company has 130,000 employees in more than 70 countries, and it had revenue of $115 billion in 2019, a 4.5% more than the previous year.

Koch Industries reinvest 90% of its earnings into the firm, and from 2003 it has made investments for more than $80 billion. Since 2013, some of their acquisitions were Molex, a connectors and electronics components manufacturer, for $7.2 billion in 2013; PetroLogistics, a propylene producer, for $2.1 billion in 2014; Oplink, an optical communications components manufacturer, for $445 million in 2014; the Flint Group, a printing inks, printing chemicals, and digital printing machines producer, for $3 billion in 2014 (in association with Goldman Sachs); Truck-Lite, a lighting device for commercial vehicles producer, for an undisclosed amount in 2015 (in partnership with BDT and Penske); and Phillips-Medesize, a medical solutions provider, for an unrevealed figure in 2016.

The company also invested $240 million in American Greetings, a greetings cards producer, in 2013; $750 million to helps in taking ADT (alarm services provider) private in 2016; $800 million to contributes to making Solera Holdings (risk and management software) private in 2016; $230 million in Transaction Network Services (payment and financial services, telecommunications) in 2016; $100 in Neustar (real-time information provider) in 2017; $300 million in Global Medical Response (biggest provider of ambulatory services in the United States) in 2018; $650 million in Meredith (media conglomerate) in 2018; $550 million in Getty Images (visual content supplier and distributor) in 2019; and $350 million in MI Windows and Doors (vinyl and aluminum windows and doors manufacturer) in 2019.

In 2020, Koch purchased Infor for nearly $13 billion. Infor is a multinational enterprise software company focused on cloud computing. Previously, Koch had invested $2.5 billion in Infor in 2017, and from 2018 onwards acquired the remaining equity.

Some of Koch's investments are related to emerging and disruptive high-growth technologies. These are carried out through its subsidiary Koch Disruptive Technology and include the following companies: Desktop Metal (3D printing), D2IQ (cloud solutions), INSIGHTEC (incision-less surgery), Ibotta (payments app), Automox (cloud solutions), Vayyar (4D imaging), Outrider (autonomous yard operations), Trackonomy (logistics tracking), Beyond Identity (passwordless authentication platform), Sight (blood count analyzer that provides results in minutes), proteanTecs (software that applies analytics to data created by on-chip components and allows health monitoring), DeepCube (deep learning software accelerator), Alkira (cloud solutions), Strider (software that fights against intellectual property theft and supply chain vulnerabilities beyond the cyber domain), Percepto (robotics for autonomous inspection), Dragos (cybersecurity for industrial infrastructure), and Pliops (database acceleration).

In addition, Koch Industries owns 12,167,310 shares of the alarm services provider ADT (6.42 billion market capitalization), equal to $108,776,000; 4,918,615 shares of the consulting firm Vistra ($8.83 billion market capitalization), equivalent to $96,700,000; 4 million shares of the commercial mortgage lender Ladder Capital ($1.54 billion market capitalization), equal to $39,120,000; 1,625,000 shares of the media conglomerate Meredith ($1.5 billion market capitalization), equivalent to $35,189,000; and 109,305 shares of Formfactor ($3.49 billion market capitalization), equivalent to $4,702,000.

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This article was updated on March 15, 2021 by Andrés Taurian

The eldest son of Helen Walton and Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, Samuel Robson "Rob" Walton has a net worth of $53.5 billion in November 2019.

Robson has been chairman of Wal-Mart since 1992. While Wal-Mart's shares are nearly flat over past year, the 3 children of the founder collected $1.2 billion in dividends. His father, a former clerk, Sam Walton (d.1992) founded Bentonville store with brother James in 1962. Today, Wal-Mart has sales of $473.08 billion, employs more than 2.3 million people.

American businessman, CEO and the Chairman of his family's Arvest Bank, James Carr Walton, has a net worth of $53.3 billion in November 2019. Jim runs family's Arvest bank, which has branches in Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. His father, Sam Walton (d. 1992), a former clerk, founded a Bentonville store now Wal-mart with his brother James in 1962. Today, Wal-Mart has sales of $405 billion and employs more than 2.1 million people across 28 countries. Jim Walton received over $300 million in dividend payouts. He also serves as chairman of Community Publishers, which operates newspapers in Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. He is married to Lynne McNabb Walton and has four children, including Alice Anne Walton and Thomas Layton Walton. The family resides in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Steve Ballmer is an American businessman and the chief executive of Microsoft, has a net worth of $53.3 billion in November 2019. The Detroit native dropped out of Stanford M.B.A. program to join Harvard classmate Bill Gates in 1980 as employee number 30. The first business manager hired by Gates. He dumped 18% of his shares in November 2010, his biggest sale ever and first in seven years. Bill Gates' college mate dismisses it's a move to the exits, saying he's "fully committed" to Microsoft, where he's been boss since 2000. In that time Microsoft has lost half of its value while profits have doubled. Analysts put the breakup value of the company up to three times current stock price. The software sales juggernaut has sold 350 million copies of Office and 400 million copies of Windows 7

Best recognized as the founder of the retailing company IKEA, Swedish business magnate and billionaire Ingvar Kamprad has an estimated net worth of $52.8 billion in January 2018.

At such a very young age, this successful businessman has shown impressive business skills by selling matches from his bicycle. Later on, he began selling other items like seeds, ballpoint pens, pencils, fish and Christmas tree decorations. It was in 1943 when he founded his company IKEA which was actually taken from the first later of his name, Ingvar Kamprad, E from Elmtaryd, the family to which he was born and A for Agunnaryd which is just a nearby village.

Since he almost own his company, Ingvar Kamprad is considered as one of the wealthiest businessmen in the world today. In fact, in 2007, he became the 4th richest person in the world with his net worth, at the time, of US$33. Despite the significant reduction on his net worth from 2007, Kamprad still became the 10th richest person in the world in 2010 with his $23 billion worth of fortune. In 2011, the final value of his assets was estimated to be around $6 billion. And as of March 2013, his net worth was reduced to $3.3 billion only.

Despite his massive net worth, Kamprad is still known for his low-profile living. In fact, he still takes the economy class when he travels. Also, his company IKEA, is noted for its cost-saving measures. According to him, humans primarily depend on will and strength and that they don't need extravagant titles, uniforms, and flashy cars.

Ingvar Kamprad was married Margaretha Kamprad until the latter's death in 2011. This billionaire has four children named Jonas, Peter, Anikka, and Mathias.

American heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune, Alice Louise Walton, has a net worth of $52.3 billion in November 2019. She is the daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and Helen Walton, and sister of S. Robson Walton and Jim Walton. Another brother, John T. Walton, died in a 2005 plane crash. She is building Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. While Wal-Mart's shares are nearly flat over 2010, the 3 children of the founder collected $1.2 billion in dividends. His father, a former clerk, Sam Walton (d.1992) founded Bentonville store with brother James 1962; today Wal-Mart has sales of $405 billion, employs more than 2.1 million people. An avid horse-lover, Walton currently lives in Mineral Wells, Texas on the Rocking W Ranch.

French heiress, socialite, businesswoman and philanthropist, Liliane Bettencourt has a net worth of $42.3 billion in August 2017, according to Bloomberg. Bettencourt is currently the richest woman in Europe. The only child of the founder of L'Oréal, Eugene Schueller, she inherited the L'Oréal fortune when her father died, becoming the principal shareholder of L'Oréal in 1957. One of the world's largest cosmetics and beauty companies, L'Oréal has over 66,620 employees worldwide. She had her fortune placed under the guardianship of her daughter Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers in 2011 following a very public 3-year legal battle. She was forced to resign from L'Oréal's board in February 2012; her 25-year-old grandson Jean- Victor Meyers took her seat. This is the latest in a long line of court cases pitting the Bettencourts against each other. In 2008, Bettencourt-Meyers petitioned the courts to investigate a reported $1 billion in cash and gifts her mother allegedly gave to Francois-Marie Banier, a well-known photographer, writer and painter whom she befriended. As a philanthropist her family foundation, la Fondation Bettencourt Schueller have support and develop medical, cultural and humanitarian projects with an annual budget of £160 million.

The son of Forrest Mars, Sr., and grandson of Frank C. Mars, John Franklyn Mars has a net worth of $41.6 billion in November 2019. John Mars and his siblings, Forrest Jr. and Jacqueline, own $31.6 billion (sales) Mars, the world's largest candy company thanks in part to its $23 billion acquisition of gum maker Wrigley's in 2008. The candy maker's most famous brands include Milky Way, M&M's, 3 Musketeers, Twix, Skittles, and Snickers, reportedly named for the Mars family's favorite horse. John's grandfather, Frank Mars, began making chocolates in 1911 in his Tacoma, WA kitchen. It was his father Forrest Sr. who invented malt-flavored nougat and M&M's, over 400 million of which are produced in the United States each day. Mars has even branched out into consumer and pet foods with the well known brands Uncle Ben's Rice and Whiskas under the Mars umbrella. Mars is a noted supporter of Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington.

The daughter of Forrest Edward Mars, Sr., and granddaughter of Frank C. Mars, Jacqueline Mars has a net worth of $41.6 billion in November 2019.

Chinese Internet entrepreneur Jack Ma has an estimated net worth of $41.1 billion in October 2019. He is also #395 in the World Billionaires List, #442 in 2012, #16 in China, and #11 in China Rich List. Born Ma Yun (in Chinese) on September 10, 1964 in Hangzhou, Zheijang, China, he graduated with a degree in English from Hangzhou Teacher’s Institue, now the Hangzhou Normal University, in 1988. He then became an English and International Trade lecturer at the Hangzhou Dianzi University.

Ma is the founder of China Yellowpages, the first Internet company ever established in China in 1995, and Alibaba.com, a business-to-business site built in 1999. He has also runs an information technology company for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Trade and Commerce. He is the CEO and Chairman of Alibaba which has grown exponentially since the site was launched. Currently, it has 79 million members in more than 240 countries with six active subsidiaries such as Alibaba.com, Tmall.com, eTao, Alibaba Cloud Computing, Taobao Marketplace, and Yahoo! China. He is also the CEO of Alibaba Group.

In January 2012, Jack Ma made a surprise announcement that he will be stepping down as the CEO at 48. It was quite odd since Alibaba widely anticipated to float its shares in a massive IPO later this year. His fortune is up by $700 million since last year as the value of the Alibaba Group has jumped. It has arranged to buy back the 40% share of the company which is owned by Yahoo. It will also delist its b2b site Alibaba.com from the Hong Kong stock exchange. The purchase gave the company a $40 billion earnings.

Ma Huateng is a Chinese business magnate who has an estimated net worth of $34.6 billion. Also known as Pony Ma, he was born in Dongfang, Hainan and attended Shenzhen University in 1989 where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in computer science in 1993.

The man behind Tencent Holdings Limited, he co-founded the Chinese multinational investment holding conglomerate in 1998 along with four other classmates. Tencent QQ, an instant message tool, is the first product of the company which became very popular in China.  He currently serves as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company with subsidiaries that specialize in various Internet-related services and products, entertainment, artificial intelligence and technology, both in China and globally. Today, it is considered as Asia's most valuable company, one of the largest Internet and technology companies, and the biggest investment, gaming and entertainment conglomerates in the world.

Before he started with Tencent, he served as the Chief Executive and Chairman of the China Motion Telecom Development, where he led the research and development of the internet paging system. China Motion Telecom Development specializes in producing telecommunications products and services. In 2007, Ma Huateng was hailed by TIME magazine as one of the most influential persons in the globe.

French businessman Francois Pinault has an estimated net worth of $33.7 billion in August 2019. A high school dropout, Pinault currently runs the retail company Kering.

Francois Pinault is the owner of the holding company which holds investments in many world renowned companies like Samsonite luggage, Colorado-based Vail Ski Resort, Château Latour, Christie's auction house and Converse shoes. He is also the owner of the world's largest collection of contemporary arts.

Francois Pinault is currently married with three children. One of his sons, Francois-Henri, helps in managing the company which was founded by his father. He actually runs the Groupe Artemis which is a holding company for the family's investments in wine, art and insurance.

He was previously involved in a long battle against LVMH over the control of Gucci. LVMH is considered as the largest luxury goods company in the world. It was in March 1999 when Gucci asked the PPR to obtain the ownership interest in Gucci in order to fend off LVMH which was managed by billionaire Bernard Arnault. This led to the long struggle between France's two wealthiest men, Bernard Arnault and Francois Pinault.

Italian businesswoman Maria Franca Fissolo has an estimated net worth of $33.4 billion as of January 2018. She is best recognized as the widower of the famous Italian entrepreneur, Michele Ferrero. Her husband is known to be the founder of the chocolate manufacturing company, Ferrero SpA, which is considered as the second largest confectionery company across Europe. Among the company's famous brands include Mon Chéri, Ferrero Rocher, Kinder Chocolate, Kinder Eggs, and Nutella.

Maria Franca Fissolo and Michele Ferrero have two sons together named Pietro and Giovanni Ferrero. It was in 1987 when the founder appointed his two sons as the co-CEOs of the company. However, Pietro died in 2011, leaving his brother, Giovanni, as the sole CEO. On the 14th of February 2015, Michele Ferrero died, leaving his massive wealth to his wife and son.

American businessman, co-founder and Chairman of Nike, Inc., Philip Hampson "Phil" Knight has a net worth of $31.9 billion in August 2019. Knight, a former University of Oregon track star, founded Blue Ribbon sports in 1964, selling Japanese running shoes out of the trunk of his car at track meets on the weekends while teaching accounting at Portland State. He renamed his company Nike after the Greek goddess of Victory in 1971 and paid Carolyn Davidson $35 to design the company's iconic swoosh logo. In 2002, Knight purchased Will Vinton (Animation) Studios, Travis, Knight's son, serves as president and CEO of Knight's stop-motion film studio, Laika. The studio released its first feature film, Coraline, in 2009 and plans to release its second film, ParaNorman, in the summer of 2012. The Knight Management Center at Stanford University opened this past May. The 8 building complex cost a reported $345 million to construct, with $105 million coming from Knight himself.

The Portland native Phil Knight's swoosh empire continues to outperform. Firm was named the NFL's official on-field apparel provider in October 2010, replacing rival Reebok.

American casino magnate, Sheldon Gary Adelson, has a net worth of $31.4 billion in August 2019. Currently the 8th wealthiest American and 16th wealthiest person in the world, Adelson vastly increased his net worth upon the initial public offering of Las Vegas Sands in December 2004. He is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., the parent company of Venetian Macao Limited which operates The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino and the Sands Expo and Convention Center. His fortune is up $7 billion since in 2010, as his strong position in the casino-crazy Asian markets has pushed stock of Las Vegas Sands up roughly 50% to a recent $48. (Shares once traded as low as $1.50 in 2009.) Through his majority-owned subsidiary Sands China, Adelson has 3 resorts in Macau.

The original source of Adelson's wealth and current investments was the computer trade show COMDEX, which he and his partners developed for the computer industry; the first show was in 1979. He sold it to Japan's Softbank for $862 million in 1995 and later built the $1.5 billion Venetian Resort Hotel Casino and the 1.2-million-square-foot Sands Convention Center in 1997 in Las Vegas. He opened the $1.9 billion Palazzo resort in 2008.

Tadashi Yanai is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fast Retailing Co., Ltd. and has an estimated net worth of $30.4 billion in August 2019. He is the richest person in Japan and 66th among the world's billionaires.

Yanai's Fast Retailing company is the umbrella company for Uniqlo retail stores. In 1984, he opened his first Uniqlo store in Hiroshima and since then, it has gone global. He continues to expand the brand outside Japan. The most recent is the opening of his first store in Indonesia.

First Retailing also owns the Theory and Helmut Lang brands. Tadashi Yanai’s success in converting customers has helped boost the company’s stock price by two-thirds over the past year. He recently announced his plan to retire in 2013, and his successor is still under way. Speculations is that his two sons may take over.

Yanai was a recipient of the International Retailer of the Year Award in 2010 by the National Retail Foundation in the US. He was the fourth Japanese to have won the award, and the first since 1998 when it was won by Masatoshi Ito, the owner and honorary chairman of the Ito Yokado retail group. He was chosen as the best company president in a survey conducted by the Japanese corporate executives of Sanno Institute of Management in 2008 and 2009. He was also included in 2012 on the 50 Most Influential list of Bloomberg Markets Magazine.